5.11.2011

How sweet are their little feet (& hands)

Happy hump day!!!

Today I sit here begging my cold (allergies if I listen to Studley) to go away. My head is all stuffed full and it annoys me to no end. One thing I despise more than anything is being under the weather...mostly because I can be irritable (quickly) when I don't feel good. I know that and I try my hardest not to be, but I've gotta own that. LoL

Alrighty...there is something to be said about having kids! I love my kids to pieces, but they're getting bigger and growing up...having friends, liking girls all that good stuff. Some days I just wanna stunt their growth and keep them little forever. I know this would be disastrous soooo I won't do it. So for now I manage to trap their childhood in keepsakes and stuff. So my favorite thing to do is handprints and feet prints (obviously this is just a baby thing)...Babies are great...little kids are sweet...big kids are cool...what can I do that they will all like doing so I can remember them at this age while not junking up storage space. So something useful to trap this age in time.

Things you'll need:

Canvases ( I used 4 squares so they each had their own, but then again I have 4 kids so it worked out perfectly)

Acrylic paint (again the kids picked out their colors. Thus defeating the need to junk up the space with names since we know who's favorite is what)

A paintbrush

Your kids

Supplies to clean up with

Ok I started with my oldest, Nathanael, who's favorite color right now is green and black so we opted for green. His hand was almost too big...surprisingly enough his hands are about the same size as mine...he has bear paws lol

What I did was paint the paint onto his hand with the brush...do it thick and do it quick. Because acrylic paint dries fast. Make sure every inch is covered. I placed his hand myself because I wanted to make sure it was in the right place. Therefore he had to hold really still and relax so I could place it.

Now onto Thomas. He wanted blue..obviously. It's his favorite. We mixed his paint with another to give it a really royal color and then plastered it on. I also placed his hand. Some kids won't let you do this, but mine recognize that mommy is OCD haha. His did this beautiful pooling thing where it raised much more than Nathanael's did, but they both came out beautifully!

Now Brien is in love with red. All things red. He even dips to pink just because it's a lighter shade of red. It's desperately amusing. Now his was a bit more challenging simply because he is such a strong personality. He wanted to do it all himself. But we got the paint on with a bit of struggle since it's apparently really something that tickles to have your palm painted! And we place his hand as centered as possible. He was so happy when we were done that his hand would be there forever.

Then we got to Hadleigh. Hahahaha this makes me chuckle because as the only girl I thought it was adorable we ended up having to use her feet. She wasn't about to open her hand once we had paint on it. She then proceeded to squeeze paint all over her, on my floor, on Studley, on me...it was a mess. Once we cleaned it up we mixed some more paint...Her print is a beautiful mix of a violet and a little bit of white. I painted one foot at a time and placed it. Now this frustrated me soooooooooooo bad. Studley was standing there telling me...DON'T worry it's it's imperfections that make it perfect...basically she moved her foot and squished her toes. Still looks adorable and I know that she was only 5 months old...

Needless to say I'm in love with my new(ish) artwork that still needs hung. I have the perfect spot for it I just have to get Studley to take 5 minutes!!!

If you do this with you kids I would love to see pictures!!! Memories that are trapped in time...I'll always remember each little story behind each print!